Transcript Early Childhood Literacy

Early Childhood Literacy
Timothy Shanahan
University of Illinois at Chicago
Some Reasons for Concern
• Early literacy development predicts/affects later
school achievement (Cunningham & Stanovich,
1997; Duncan, Dowsett, Claessens, Magnuson, et
al., 2007; Juel, 1988; Snow, Tabors, & Dickinson,
2001; Smart, Prior, Sansor, & Oberkind, 2005)
• Second-grade reading achievement is a major
predictor of family income at age of 42 (Ritchie &
Bates, 2013)
• Substantial language differences evident by the
age of 2 for poverty children (Fernald, 2013)
Disparities in Early
Vocabulary Experience
30 million word gap
Professional
Families
Child’s Cumulative Vocabulary
(Words)
1200
Working Class
Families
600
Welfare
Families
200
16 mos.
24 mos.
36 mos.
Child’s Age (Months)
Source: Hart & Risley (2003)
Some Reasons for Concerns (cont.)
• Approximately 1/3 of American 4th graders
read “below basic”, and this is true of more
than 50% of African American and Latino 4th
graders (NAEP, 2013)
• Literacy plays important role in civic
participation, health care/wellness, economic
success, social success
Potential Solution
• How can we address these literacy needs?
• One idea is to teach literacy earlier
• If kids were more advanced academically
when they entered school, we’d have more
reading success
Controversial Suggestion
• Americans have been conflicted about the
idea of early reading instruction for over 100
years
• It has long been claimed that early reading
instruction doesn’t work and that it is even
harmful to children
Early Opposition
• G. Stanley Hall, pioneer
psychologist, proposes a
stage model of
development and a rigid
concept of “readiness”
• Arnold Gessell argues
that young students can’t
learn to read and
attempts to teach them
will cause mental
problems
Reading Readiness
• Reading Readiness refers to the prerequisite
levels of maturation that are needed to allow
reading development to take place
• Intrinsic maturation: development takes place
in a fixed sequence and cannot be altered in
any way
• Extrinsic maturation: the idea that readiness
can be influenced by environmental
enhancement
Some Early Examples
• Morphett & Washburne (1931) found that
students weren’t ready to read until they reached
a mental age of 6.5
• Led school districts to delay teaching reading until
second semester grade 1 (when most kids would
have reached that time)
• However, many programs started “teaching
readiness” (visual discrimination, auditory
perception, language learning, ability to learn
concepts)
Controversy Continues
• Readiness replaced by the idea of
“developmentally appropriate practice” (DAP)
• The idea is to promote optimal learning
children by teaching them at their
developmental levels
• No research-based operationalization (ranges
from reasonable ideas about how long
children can sit to very specific claims)
Read i n g In st
r u ict
A damant
ne i o n
A ccr et i on
at hr
Bard
i n Ki n
erumg arA cet
t en
ose :
Bor eal
Br ocar d
Br omi di c
A cher ont i c
Lit t l e t o Gain
and Much t o Lose
Bar at hr um
Bor eal
Br ocar d
Br omi di c
In t he Unit ed St at es t her e is a widespr ead bel
Conger i es
Conger i es
Conn at e
Connat e
Consuet ude
Consuet ude
Cur t i l age
t i l age
ief Cur
t hat
t eaching chil
dr en t o
r ead ear l y — in kinder gar t en or even pr ekinder gar t en — wil l hel p t hem be
bet t er r eader s in t he l ong-r un. Unf or t unat el y, t her e is no scient ifi c evidence
t hat t his is so. How t hen did t his idea t ake hol d so st r ongl y?
Many children are not developmentally
ready to read in kindergarten, yet the
Common Core State Standards require
them to do just that. This is leading to
inappropriate classroom practices.
No research documents long-term gains
from learning to read in kindergarten.
Research shows greater gains from playbased programs than from preschools and
kindergartens with a more academic focus.
Children learn through playful, handson experiences with materials, the natural
world, and engaging, caring adults.
Active, play-based experiences in languagerich environments help children develop their
ideas about symbols, oral language and the
printed word — all vital components
of reading.
We are setting unrealistic reading goals
and frequently using inappropriate methods
to accomplish them.
In play-based kindergartens and
preschools, teachers intentionally design
language and literacy experiences which
help prepare children to become fluent
readers.
The adoption of the Common Core
State Standards falsely implies that
having children achieve these standards
will overcome the impact of poverty on
development and learning, and will create
equal educational opportunity for all
children.
Report Authors:
Nancy Carlsson-Paige
Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin
Joan Wolfsheimer Almon
National Early Literacy Panel
• National Early Literacy Panel (2003-2008)
reviewed research on the teaching of reading in
preschool and kindergarten
• Largest meta-analysis of research data on the
teaching of reading during these years (examined
more than 7000 potential studies, about 400-500
were included in the final review)
• Set out to determine which skills needed to be
taught early on and what confers literacy learning
advantages to young children
Decoding
Predictor
Average r
N of studies
N of children
Decoding nonwords
.72
8
763
Spelling
.60
7
1,184
Invented spelling
.58
10
778
Reading NOS
.57
3
1,739
Decoding NOS
.53
5
877
Decoding words
.52
21
4,121
Reading comprehension
.52
5
700
ABC knowledge
.50
52
7,570
Readiness
.50
5
1,988
Writing/writing name
.49
10
1,650
Arithmetic
.45
14
3,929
IQ
.45
13
2,015
Phonological awareness
.40
69
8,443
Decoding (cont).
Predictor
Average r
N of studies
N of children
RAN letters/digits
.40
12
2,081
Concepts about print
.34
12
2,604
Oral language
.33
63
9,358
RAN objects/colors
.32
16
3,100
Phonological NOS
.31
3
174
Performance IQ
.30
15
2.792
Print awareness
.29
6
683
Environmental print
.28
6
1,042
Phonological STM
.26
33
4,863
Visual motor
.25
14
1,316
Visual memory
.22
8
1,708
Visual perception
.22
16
2,551
Comprehension
Predictor
Average r
N of studies
N of children
Readiness
.59
3
348
Concepts about print
.54
3
535
ABC knowledge
.48
17
2,038
Print awareness
.48
4
347
Phonological awareness
.44
20
2,461
RAN letters/digits
.43
3
333
RAN objects/colors
.42
6
1,146
Decoding nonwords
.41
3
282
Decoding words
.40
6
1,091
Phonological STM
.39
13
1,911
Arithmetic
.35
8
1,197
Performance IQ
.34
5
253
Comprehension (cont).
Predictor
Average r
N of studies
N of children
Oral language
.33
30
4,015
Writing/writing name
.33
4
565
Visual perception
.26
9
1,438
Visual motor
.22
9
1,333
Concept knowledge
.20
3
873
Visual memory
.17
5
875
Strong to Moderate Predictors:






Alphabet Knowledge
Concepts About Print
Phonological Awareness
Oral Language
Writing Name/Writing
RAN (Rapid Automatic Naming/Lexical
Access)
Does oral language definition matter?
• What parts of oral language are examined
matters a lot.
• Vocabulary is a weak predictor of later decoding
and comprehension.
• More complex aspects of oral language, like
grammar and definitional vocabulary, are very
strong predictors of decoding and
comprehension.
Oral Language Predictors
Average Predictive Correlation
Predictor Variable
Decoding
Comprehension
Language Composite
.58
.70
Decoding < Comp
Receptive Language
.52
.63
Decoding < Comp
Expressive Language
.48
.59
Decoding = Comp
Grammar
.47
.64
Decoding < Comp
Definitional Vocabulary
.38
.45
Decoding = Comp
Verbal Knowledge
.36
.45
Decoding = Comp
Verbal-IQ
.35
.35
Decoding = Comp
Receptive Vocabulary
.34
.25
Decoding > Comp
Listening Comprehension
.33
.43
Decoding < Comp
Vocabulary NOS
.33
.31
Decoding = Comp
Expressive Vocabulary
.24
.34
Decoding = Comp
Language NOS
.20
.31
Decoding = Comp
Do the types of PA differ?
• Early forms of phonological awareness
are strong predictors of later reading
skills.
• Measures of rhyme are not the best
indicators of how well children are
acquiring phonological awareness.
• Development moves from larger units to
smaller units of sound.
NELP Instructional Studies
• Examined studies that focused on cracking the
alphabetic code (67 studies), reading/sharing books with
children (16 studies, parent/home programs (20 studies),
school-based interventions (16 studies), and language
interventions (20 studies)
• Review the most pertinent to the issues raised today
Code-Focused Interventions
• Moderate to large effects on early literacy
skills and conventional literacy skills
• Most the studies examined some form of
phonological awareness training
• There was no point along the learning
continuum that code-focused learning wasn’t
important
Code-Focused Interventions
• All of this work was done individually or in small
group
• PA training included analysis or synthesis of
words, syllables, onset-rimes, phonemes (with
feedback)—important to combine with letter
learning
• Age/developmental level made no difference in
the benefits of this kind of teaching, but what
was taught varied (larger to smaller units)
Reading to Children
• Moderate effects on oral language skills and
print knowledge
• Oral language effects were evident across
demographic groups, types of interventions,
and student risk factors
• Almost no studies looked at the impact of
reading to children on reading or on other
emergent literacy skills
Reading to Children
• Biggest impacts were derived from dialogic
reading as opposed to just reading
• Biggest payoff on the simplest measures of
oral language
• Given the lack of evidence on other literacy
outcomes, it would be imprudent to make
reading to children a program in and of itself
Language Intervention Programs
• Interventions designed to improve young
children’s oral language skills were effective,
with moderate to large effects on a variety of
outcomes
• Interventions often focused children’s
attention on particular aspects of language or
got them to interact with language in
particular ways
Language Intervention Programs
• New vocabulary or question types may be
introduced to children in a natural context
(daily routines, play); or this may take place
within a learning setting (teacher asking
children to compare pictures)
• Play-based interventions (e.g., toys, children in
control of activity) were as effective as
learning-based ones
Language Intervention Programs
• Most interventions were evaluated with
vocabulary measures (19), but there were
positive effects for cognitive ability, phonemic
awareness, print knowledge
• Effects were biggest for children with language
problems, but effective with everyone
• Programs were most effective with younger
children (3 and younger)
Some Additional Studies
• Head Start Impact Study (2010)
• Head Start increased the amount of literacy
instruction provided to 3- and 4-year-old
children
• Clear gains were made in increasing
performance on early literacy skills (including
ABC knowledge)
• Simultaneously, these children improved in
their social-emotional functioning
Some Additional Studies (cont.)
• Neuman and Roskos (1992): extensive study of
early instruction in Philadelphia
• A major focus of the study was to create
opportunities for preschoolers to engage in
literacy play (e.g., restaurant, library, post
office)
• Clear improvements in literacy learning that
took place in this play environment
Some Additional Studies (cont.)
• Head Start Impact Study (2010): Found no
lasting benefit from early Head Start literacy
improvement
• Durkin (1974-75): followed early readers from
preschool through Grade 2; found their
advantages decreased each year
Conclusions
• It is beneficial to teach early literacy
• That instruction should focus on phonological
awareness, letter names and sounds, oral language,
and book sharing
• Not only doesn’t literacy instruction harm students,
but it has positive cognitive and social-emotional
outcomes
• Successful early literacy instruction can be play-based
• Not enough to give students a good start—you have to
build on that start if it is going to have long term
benefits
Early Childhood Literacy
Timothy Shanahan
University of Illinois at Chicago
www.shanahanonliteracy.com